David Grann - Killers of the Flower Moon

“A magnificent book – a riveting true story of greed, serial murder and racial injustice. David Grann is a terrific journalist, and this is maybe the best thing he’s ever written.”

NO MAJOR SPOILERS

This is the story of the Osage Indian tribe, how they were moved off their lands by the US Government, until they were finally moved to Oklahoma, to a rocky, barren land. The Osage accepted this land because they felt that the poor conditions of the land would make the whites not want it. How wrong they were, because below that rocky land was the largest oil reserves in the US at that time.

The Osage became the richest people in the country. And then they began to die, one by one. After many murders and suspicious deaths with no arrests the Osage demanded outside help. Oklahoma petitioned the Federal Government for help, and the job fell to the small Federal police force to take charge of the investigation.

This unit would soon become the FBI and it already had J. Edgar Hoover in charge. Hoover put a local officer named Tom White to handle the case. He selected other local officers to aid him and together they would find out who were killing the Osage Indians.

David Grann, author of The Lost City of Z, writes a great narrative. It reads like a novel. This is an unbelievable story, and the author continues the investigation after the case was finally closed, only to find additional murder. This story has not been told enough. Very highly recommended.